


heat bumps

by naveed



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Army, First Love, M/M, Recovery, Shared Grief, a problem shared is a problem halved, as are all my best fics, sleepy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-19 03:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20324458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naveed/pseuds/naveed
Summary: “one cannot find love by searching for itit comes to us unbiddenthen we give it to others”[ sometimes - wax tailor ]one sleepy time of day, callum tells ben about a man he loved.





	heat bumps

“I want to tell you something,” Callum says quietly. “I just want to speak, and... and tell you this. Without interruption, please.”

Ben looks up at him from his chest. “Okay,” he murmurs. “I’m listening, go on. Won’t interrupt.”

Callum stares at the ceiling. Dots form in his vision and float around the room. “In, um... in the army,” he swallows hard, “there was a guy called Chris.”

A loud, unrestrained laugh bounced off the walls of the kitchen. Callum, two hands clutching his foot in pain, swears only half as loud. When he looks up, Chris has gone red, leaning against the oven and heaving with laughter. His smile was wide enough to cross his whole face; it raised his blushing cheeks like bobbing apples up to his teary eyes. This was the first time Callum got butterflies.

“Are you always gonna be like this?” Chris choked out between giggles. Callum stared at him helplessly. 

“_You_ left the ring on!” he cried, “The – the handle, it was burning! I’ve burnt my hand, Chris, look! And it landed right on my toes.”

Chris wiped his eyes and glanced down at him. Callum has his hand raised up to him, palm open as if to prove his point. Sure enough, there was a handle-width red mark across his palm. Chris’ breathing steadied and as he turns around to face Callum, he places his hand underneath his, lifting it up slightly.

Callum heats up in the face. “I’m sure you’ll survive,” Chris said softly, running his thumb from the surface of Callum’s fingers around to his knuckles. He held him so gently, and smiled so warmly, that Callum’s aching foot became numbed out by his legs turning completely to jelly. Chris crouched down to pick up the dropped pan, and gave him a reassuring rub on the knee before turning back to the counter.

Callum decides it’s easier to just bite the bullet. “I loved him,” he tells Ben. “I loved him.”

Ben slides his head off Callum’s chest and shuffles up, lying on his side with their heads on the same pillow. Callum stays staring upwards and lets tears settle over the surface of his eyes, scared that if he’ll blink, they’ll fall. “Did anything happen between you?” Ben asks quietly. Callum wants to touch him, but he can’t move.

“No,” he whispers, blinking, and letting a tear roll. “We had, um... I don’t know, there was little moments, you know? Where maybe,” he takes a deep breath in, “something could have happened.”

“So why didn’t it?”

Callum chokes on a sad laugh. “Well it’s the army, isn’t it?”

Callum had come into the bunks alone while his squadron were in the showers. He had sat on his mattress, closed his eyes, and took in the rare moment when things were quiet. He often woke up during the night to feel the same way. To feel calm. But in the quiet often came the feeling of being alone, and from this, Callum never figured out which was worse; feeling lonely despite having people around, or feeling lonely and _being_ alone.

When he opened his eyes, he was crying. He held his head in his hands and let it happen.

He wanted to go home.

“Callum,” came the voice from across the room, “hey.”

Chris was walking towards him, always with that kind smile. Callum looked up, rubbing his eyes; vision not quite blurry enough to obscure Chris’s face as it fell with concern. Callum didn’t want to say “go away,” but he did.

“No, hey,” Chris sat down next to Callum, arm instinctively going to wrap around his shoulder. “It’s just me.”

And no matter what his brain tells him to hide away, Callum grabbed Chris’ left shoulder tightly in his hand and buried his face in his right. _You_, Chris. It’s not _just_ you, no, you’re not a _just_. You are huge. You are everything. It’s _all_ you.

Chris rubbed his back and held him while he cried.

“You hated it, huh?”

“Not all the time,” Callum confesses, turning his head to look at Ben. “You know, I did have mates, and we did have a laugh. It just never felt...”

Ben’s face is soft and understanding. “Genuine?”

“I don’t know,” Callum sighs. “Like it wouldn’t last. Like outside of the army, most of us wouldn’t be friends.”

“And are you?”

Callum chuckles. “No. But then I never got in touch with Chris again either.”

He rolls onto his side then, putting one hand under his cheek and the other over Ben’s shoulder. Ben lifts up his own hand and places it on top, interlocking their fingers, then bringing them down to the mattress between them. There’s something about Ben in this moment, so quiet and calm, that Callum hasn’t seen in him before. A certain type of kindness, an openness, that just says, _I’m here for you_. He’s so far from the Ben he sees during the day. Callum has never had this receptiveness from anybody else before. Only Vicky, who sat down with him and let him open his heart when she told him her brother had died. And now, Ben, who strokes Callum’s knuckles with his thumb, and let’s himself feel the warmth in his heart that he hasn’t felt for three years.

“Do you think,” Callum begins, cautious voice barely a whisper. “Do you think if Paul died when you two weren’t together, it would have been easier?”

Ben shakes his head and looks down at their hands. “Paul wouldn’t have died if we weren’t together.”

Callum watches him, worried he’ll start pulling back his emotions. “You don’t know that,” he offers, not knowing if it’s really comforting or not. “He could have been out with anyone. Anyone could go out and bump into those people.”

“Is that what you’re thinking?” Ben asks, moving it back to Callum. “That if you had the chance to be with Chris, it would be easier now he’s gone?”

Callum doesn’t like this conversation anymore. All the questions, all the possibilities; they’re too big. “I don’t know.”

“Candy and nuts,” Ben says, breaking their hands apart and holding Callum’s cheek instead. “It’s not worth thinking about.”

People got hurt, in the army. All the time. Callum got hurt. Chris got hurt. Men and women whose chips you stole at dinnertime would be killed the very next day – and if you didn’t die in the field, you’d come home and do it yourself.

Chris, arm and leg in bandages, still managed a grin when he saw him.

“It’s worse than it looks,” he said, then laughed at himself. “No, the other way around. It’s not as bad as it looks. I’m still drugged, I think.”

Callum tried to laugh along, but his heart was too heavy. Chris, naturally, noticed something was wrong; although it’s a superfluous observation. He didn’t exactly expect Callum to be all smiles. He’d only just been let back onto the field himself, after the explosion suffered to his leg left him with a physical and emotional unbalance.

“It was scary,” Callum said, sitting down on the edge of the bed by Chris’ side. “They didn’t even tell me you were still alive, let alone if you lost them.”

“It’s all on the surface. Burns and that. I’ve still got my bones and muscle, just not as much skin.”

Chris raised his arm to prove his point. Callum sighed. When he lowered it again, he rested his hand on top of Callum’s. His palm was hot beneath the bandages, dirty fingers which poked out the top scratching the backs of Callum’s.

“Are they gonna send you home?”

“No.”

“Good.” He stared at their hands.

“Are _you_ going home?”

“No.”

“Good.” Chris gave him a small smile. Callum looked up, and turned his body more towards him. Then he reached out to hold the back of Chris’ head in his other hand, and leant forward until their foreheads touched. Chris mirrored his actions, running his intact set of fingers through the soft stubble of Callum’s hair. Their eyes fluttered closed at the same time. They breathed the same air in and out. Around them was only the buzz of the heart monitor. Were it attached to Callum, it would have thought he was dying.

Ben leans over and kisses him. Softly as ever, and slowly too. Callum puts his hand in his hair. The world feels at peace. Outside of this room, there is nothing.

Lifting up the hem of Callum’s shirt, Ben runs his fingers along a scar on his stomach ever so lightly. His hand curves from his front around to Callum’s waist, and he traces the faint heat bumps rising across his skin. He wonders if there’s a clean slate anywhere on Callum – arms and back dotted with moles and freckles, legs bruised and torso scarred. Up his neck are more heat bumps, patches of red like spilled paint, rising with the fine hairs that stand up on end when Ben runs a hand up his back. His body, with all its history and flaws, is the most meaningful part of him at times, and the least at times too.

It’s meaningful when Ben asks him how he got a scar, and Callum tells him of when he landed in the infirmary, muscles ripped beneath skin that nearly exposed them. Then, it means nothing, when Callum tells him what happened when he first fell in love with a man – what happened inside him. Because love, it isn’t material; it isn’t tangible; and most of all, it isn’t rational.

Love comes to us unbidden. And then, we give it to others.

**Author's Note:**

> love from bobbybeales.tumblr.com


End file.
